Burn Out

Photo by Joel Darwin
(I was taking an actual nap, the splayed limbs and the big butt are real)

How are you guys holding up? I’m barely feeling October and I’m terrified that I’ll blink and I’ll be nowhere ready for our trip out of here in November. We’ve spent three nights out of this work week doing overtime way past midnight and we wake up already trying to sort out our deadlines for the day.

The two of us are basically locked up in here with testy emotions and stacks of to-do lists. I would squeeze as much naps as I can in between client feedback and Joel has resorted to singing and playing Yo Yo Ma in the apartment to stay sane. It’s so hard trying to stay motivated when you’re already burning out. Joel also works as an English trainer part time and lately he’s been decreasing his teaching hours to put in more time into our business and this is the first time where we’re perpetually together working round the clock.

Our work weeks don’t always look like this but we’re in this crazy position of trying to take on and finish as much as we can before we go on break from the end of November to the first week of January. When Joel and I have an opportunity to go on vacation, we go balls out. Because we’re going to be gone for that long, we really have to tie all lose ends and clock in more income for our pocket money and for the Manila bills we still have to pay for while we’re gone.

This week has been making me reflect about pushing ourselves this hard. I get that rewards feel so much better when it’s earned but I’m wondering if there’s a better way to go about it. I’m a snarling bear when I’m stressed and the last things a snarling bear wants are hugs and Rumi quotes. I feel like punting woodland creatures when I’m stressed.

We started ordering lunch from one of those affordable meal delivery services that have been getting popular these days. It lifted a huge weight from our shoulders when we didn’t have to prepare lunch or wash dishes. We’ve been ordering from a vegetarian kitchen too so we don’t have to shovel junk down our energy-depleted bodies. Actual lunch eating has been reduced to 20 minutes (I timed it), so we can actually devote the customary remaining 40 minutes to resting.

I squeezed in two Theta Healing sessions this week and that cleared up my emotions as well. I don’t know how it is with other people, but I think stress is a emotional and spiritual problem. I’ve become much more aware of this when I started working on my own. My inability to compose myself with grace under pressure or my naiveté with taking on more projects than I can handle are all rooted in inner juju problems. It’s everything. I can be a bit of a control freak and and lose my shit when my days don’t go as planned — chances are, I’m like that because of a bunch of past experiences and belief systems.

In the spiritual realm, Joel and I start and end the day with prayer and we’ve made a habit of waking up and reading the bible. The latter is something recent. We took it as a challenge to read the Bible from start to finish. We’ve been enjoying Genesis and its wonderful tellings of rape, incest, and douchebaggery.

Kidding aside (or am I?), Bible reading has become an exercise for us to get to know the character of God and humanity and more often than not, it becomes more freeing knowing you can rest in the universe and that there’s something so much bigger than money, status, and deadlines.

For my emotions, I’m a big advocate of talking things out and unearthing past baggage and issues. When you dig through your emotions hard enough, you’ll come into contact with all your debilitating beliefs and thoughts. We do this in all sorts of ways. Writing and sitting quietly in traffic helps me with this, but I take it a step further by doing Theta Healing (it’s a new age healing modality), intuitive tarot readings, and meditation. You’d be surprised how much your intuition knows and how much your subconscious stores up. Whether we like it or not, emotions can get in the way of productivity and personal (family, friends, self-esteem, etc.) issues have this magnificent, pathetic way of ruining work flow.

I’m a really introspective person and it follows that it’s the intangible things that I focus on mending. It’s not good to stay here too much though and I’m realizing I should throw myself into more physical activities. I have a lot to learn from people who love their endorphins and I’m hoping that I’ll usher in a period of moving my muscles soon enough.

For now, I’m going to stick to playing Arrested Development in the background while I work.